Mantegna had been commissioned after 1497 by Isabella d'Este to translate the mythological themes written by the court poet Paride Ceresara into paintings for her private apartment (studiolo) in the Palazzo Ducale.

These paintings will be dispersed in the following years: one of them, the legend of the God Comus, is left unfinished by Mantegna and will completed by his successor as court painter in Mantua, Lorenzo Costa.

After the death of his wife, Mantegna became at an advanced age the father of a natural son, Giovanni Andrea; and at the last, although he has continued launching out into various expenses and schemes, he has serious tribulations, such as the banishment from Mantua of his son Francesco, who had incurred the marquis' displeasure.

Perhaps the aged master and connoisseur regarded as barely less trying the hard necessity of parting with a beloved antique bust of Faustina.

Very soon after this transaction he dies in Mantua, on September 13, 1506, still at work on several complex mythological allegories for Isabella.